The first feature pack for Shepherd’s Staff 2018 is available! Here are some of the changes you can take advantage of when you install it.
Paper- and Postage-Saving Updates to Statements
In the past, funds that did not have any pledges would have “Pledge: (none)” listed on the printed statement. Across several funds, this can take up a lot of paper space. Now, if there is no pledge assigned to a fund, the pledge section is suppressed.
Also new: unchecking both “Group by fund” and “Itemize offerings” prints a space-saving Giving Summary by fund. This can help your church reduce the number of pages you print.
In the end, both improvements can save you money on postage.
Updated Table Reports for United Methodist Edition
United Methodist congregations shifted into the 2017–2020 quadrennium. Shepherd’s Staff updated the Table I/II/III annual report to accommodate this, allowing these congregations to accurately gather the information they need.
More Detailed Searches for Dynamic Subgroups
New search fields have been added for dynamic subgroups to make it easier to find the information you need. One notable change is for the field “Medical/Allergies”. For example, you can now find people who have any allergy listed, no allergy, or a specific allergy. You can then use Mail Merge to pull a report of all these people.
Here are the other new search fields that have been added for subgroups:
- EOI Number
- Skip Renumbering?
- Send Statements By
- Envelope Name
- Custom Statement Name
- Last Statement E-mail
Subgroup Name Can Be Hidden on Anniversary Reports
As a church leader or administrator, you know that people’s privacy is important and that many people don’t like to be publicly categorized. To help with sensitivity issues, you can now hide the subgroup name on an anniversary report or calendar. For example, you can use a subgroup to pull the names of people who have wedding anniversaries in February but have lost their spouse and now choose to not list these specifications at the top of the report when you share it with others.
Notable Fixes
We have fixed an issue that prevented Gifts-in-Kind reports from printing, and we have fixed an issue with the Vanco import. Also, we have fixed the bug that caused the help system to pop up while scheduling a Person Visit.
You can download and install the feature pack within Shepherd’s Staff itself. From the main menu, select “Utilities”, then “Check for software updates”. Then follow the instructions to download and install the feature pack.
